Chapter 1

"Uncle -- My mother is dead. Can you please come and get me?

-- Sally Gervais"

The e-mail message from Sally Gervais was brief and pointed. As it turned out, I received the same message twice more in the hours that followed. Evidently, Sally Gervais was entirely alone on one of the most isolated islands in the Pacific.

Her family's computer was relying on satellite-based Internet services, which, at least in their incredibly remote location, were spotty and unreliable.

I would write back asking for details, but I knew that getting my e-mail communication through could be problematic. Even if it did go through, I might wait a long while to receive further information.

Sally Gervais' situation was unique. She had grown up on the tiny Pacific island her father had named for her — an uncharted, unclaimed little rock, far south of Hawaii and somewhere in the general vicinity of Palmyra Island — itself an isolated location indeed. But Palmyra was a metropolis compared to Sally Gervais' home.

She had been only eight years old when her parents, Vincent and Monique Gervais, had exiled themselves to their extraordinarily exotic, completely uninhabited locale. That was twelve years ago. Sally would be nineteen or twenty now.

The Gervais' plan had been to return to the United States when Sally was about seventeen — college age. While her parents had chosen their isolation and intended to continue it indefinitely, Sally's father and mother had been aware that inflicting their chosen lifestyle on their only child could be cruel and inhumane. Vincent and Monique had intended that Sally enroll in a college — either the University of Hawaii or, possibly, a university on the Mainland. They assumed that after the young woman matured into adulthood, she would choose her own lifestyle.

Her mother, Monique, planned to spend six months or a year close to Sally, in order to help her adjust to the enormity of the world outside their island. Then, the family's plan dictated, Monique would return alone to her husband and to the isolation of Sally Island.

Sally Gervais would not return there — at least not permanently. Her parents expected her to choose to remain in the larger world.

I would learn all this only much later, but Vincent's plans had gone seriously awry. When Sally was only sixteen, her father suffered a debilitating stroke. A thousand miles away from effective medical assistance, Vincent had soon died.

Monique began preparations for the two of them, herself and her daughter, to leave Sally Island permanently at the earliest opportunity. At forty-eight years of age, Monique Gervais was relatively young and physically fit. She should have been capable of resuming her long-delayed "normal" life in The World. It only required that she be entirely competent to do so.

Unfortunately, she was not. Unknown to anyone but the two of them, the bold experiment she and her husband had begun eight years before his death had been a failure. Monique Gervais was, and for some time had been, mentally unwell.

For a long while, Sally had no sure way of knowing this. Monique's outward appearance and behavior remained unchanged from what the young girl had always known. In their isolated world, whatever behavior her mother displayed was, by definition, normal. Oh, there had been fits of depression that had arrived shortly after her father's death, but Sally attributed these to her mother's natural unhappiness at losing her life's companion.

Sally was aware that, now that she and her mother were alone, the plan was for the two of them promptly to depart the island. But the excuses her mother made for the lengthy delays in their departure always sounded sensible. Sally knew that securing transportation away from their island was a major undertaking. She knew that a ship capable of taking them to a major hub of civilization — Tahiti or Honolulu — was going to be difficult to secure, and would be long-delayed in reaching them.

And so she was patient.

But after more than two years of waiting for their long-promised departure, her mother's excuses and rationales for the continued delay began to ring untrue. Before Sally could react, Monique took ill herself, and the younger woman's time and attention were focused for many months on her mother's care. Sally, by now eighteen years old, was the only able-bodied adult on the island, and she knew that her mother was in desperate need of medical attention.